South Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations Francis Deng told reporters on May 12th that the Misseriya Arab tribesmen's attack on a convoy of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) and a delegation of the Ngok Dinka tribe the previous week killed his older brother, the Ngok Dinka tribe's Paramount Chief Kuol Deng Kuol.
At least one UNISFA Ethiopian peacekeeper was also murdered. The attack occurred on land that belonged to the Dinkas, in the vicinity of Abyei, the oil-producing region which borders South Sudan and Sudan and remains contested between the two countries.
Ambassador Deng said that UNISFA failed to adequately protect his brother, leading the Paramount Chief into what turned out to be a trap that could have been prevented with a more robust UNISFA force. He also said that the government of Sudan to the north had to know in advance of the heavy presence of the Misseriya Arabs in the area, or may have even been complicit in the attack. The Misseriya had supported indicted war criminal President Omar al-Bashir's regime in the northern part of the country against the south during the bloody civil war leading up to South Sudan's secession and independence.
It is in Bashir's interest to intimidate the Dinkas, who would support South Sudan in any referendum to determine the final status of the Abyei region - i.e., whether to join Sudan or South Sudan. The African Union has proposed such a referendum to be held in October 2013, allowing only permanent residents such as the Dinkas to vote. This approach is consistent with a decision of the Hague-based International Court of Arbitration in July 2009, which had defined Abyei’s territory as the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms. Bashir wants the Misseriya Arab nomads to also vote in the referendum, even though their only connection to the Dinkas' land is when they periodically invade it to graze their cattle.
South Sudan has called for a credible investigation of the attack resulting in the execution of its UN ambassador's brother, the Paramount Chief Kuol Deng Kuol of the Ngok Dinka tribe. According to the Sudan Tribune, "South Sudan on Monday lodged a strongly worded complaint to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) over the killing of Abyei tribal leader Kuol Deng Kuol, warning that until the perpetuators are identified and brought to justice, it is no longer ’business as usual.’"
South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit said, “I hold the government of Sudan, especially president Bashir himself responsible if he fails to produce criminals and ensure that they are tried by the independent and competent court of law. I know this is a clear political scheme to sabotage the conduct of referendum."
The tragedy could have been avoided had UNISFA heeded the prescient warning just a week before by Deng Mading Mijak, South Sudan’s deputy co-chair of the Abyei Joint Oversight Committee. He said, according to the state-owned SSTV, that the Abyei area has, in the past months, experienced high tension, allegedly due to increased activities of “armed” Arabs nomads, and appealed to UNISFA to take full responsibility of the volatile security situation.
“The United Nations interim force for Abyei (UNISFA) is the one responsibility for the provision of the security and protection of civilian as agreed by the two parties. They should be seen doing their work so that the area becomes arms free,” Mijak said.
Instead, UNISFA added fuel to the fire by recklessly leading a convoy into an area, overrun by hundreds of Misseriya Arabs, without adequate armed protection. Unwilling to own up to this tragic mistake, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson's office responded to an inquiry by Inner City Press on the incident as follows: "The Department of Peacekeeping Operations is confident that its peacekeepers responded robustly to the incident."
For its part, the UN Security Council issued a pro-forma condemnation of the attack. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, whom has shown special interest over the years in resolving the Sudanese crisis, also issued a statement which called for the perpetrators "to be arrested and held accountable." She added that "Paramount Chief Kuol Deng Kuol was pursuing a negotiated agreement for Abyei just minutes before the attack."
Inner City Press has reported that "a new draft resolution on UNISFA, on which the United States has the pen," may be in the works. If so, it is not likely to make any more difference than the bi-weekly closed meetings on Sudan and South Sudan that the Security Council holds at the urging of the United States, or all the previous Security Council resolutions regarding Sudan.
To date, the Security Council has been ineffective in stopping the killings in Sudan, not only of civilians but also of the UN peacekeepers sent in harm's way to protect the civilians. As a result, the Misseriya Arab nomad militiamen, as well as other Arab militia groups such as the Janjaweed in Darfur, perform the dirty work of killing native black African tribesmen in Sudan and contested territories for the racist Arab regime run by the indicted war criminal Bashir in Khartoum. And they continue to do so with impunity.
